It starts with a QR code; when you travel to Japan, you register your trip and personal information online and receive a QR code that you can save, print, or screenshot for later. When you enter the country, you present that QR code along with your passport, and that’s it: you’re in.
There are additional rules for medications, and if you don’t have the QR code handy, you can fill out paperwork on the spot, but it takes time.
David and I returned from Japan less than a week ago, and since then I’ve traveled quite a bit for work; I won’t be home until the end of March. A week ago as I write this…adjusting for time zones…we were asleep in Tokyo and preparing for our penultimate day (well, pre-penultimate day, but we’ll get to that).
This was my second trip to Japan and David’s first; it was more complicated than my last trip, and we had the kinds of complications that arise from complicated trips: weather delays, missed buses, multiple transfers by train, and a touch of illness on both our parts. However, it was a good trip, one that took me to places in Japan I’d wanted to see, gave David a chance to ski in Japan, and served as a bit of a romantic getaway, long overdue.
It will take me a while to go through the photos, and write the pages, and organize my thoughts. Even now my head swims at the breadth of our trip: a week in the northern island of Hokkaido seems like a different trip than our time in Miyajima, Kyoto, and Tokyo.
We traveled a lot in-country. We took trains, planes, and buses between cities; I rented a car in Hokkaido; there was a short ferry ride to Miyajima. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) a couple of times. We ascended and descended mountains via ropeway (cable cars). We covered a lot of ground on foot.
After a week in Hokkaido, split between a few days in Sapporo and a few more in Furano, we flew south to Hiroshima and stayed on the small island of Miyajima. We had an afternoon in Hiroshima and then stayed in Kyoto for a few days with day trips to Kobe, Osaka, and Amanohashidate. We ended with a couple of days in Tokyo.
Of course we met up with Tamu: Taichi Tamura, our guitarist family friend who performed in Osaka.
Our flight back was delayed by bad weather in New York, forcing us to stay one more night in Tokyo near the airport. This put is a day behind returning to work, but ultimately worked out: we arrived at JFK Tuesday morning.
So that’s that trip. There will be more to come.